Why Honor Matters: A Review

Dec 31, 2018

Why Honor Matters by Tammler Sommers was the most fascinating book I read
this year. Literally thought provoking. It contrasts traditional western
liberal philosophic ethic, which the author labels dignity, with the much
maligned/ignored ethic of honor. Tammler argues that we should reintroduce
“constrained” forms of the honor ethic to various domains. He is
acutely aware of the large potential issues with unconstrained honor
systems—excessive retribution, subjugation and killing of women—and so
throughout is very careful to keep this foremost in the discussion and to
emphasize that the “constrained” modifier is critical. Overall, he’s looking to
see how we could turn the dial towards honor, rather than flip the switch.

Well-contained honor-oriented approaches may have inherent defects, yet
still be morally preferable by a mile to systematic and idealized approaches
that could achieve perfection “in principle.” The old saying “Don’t let the
perfect get in the way of the good” is worth taking very seriously here. If
we allow honor to work its magic, while limiting its excesses, we can make
actual rather than theoretical progress.

This book gave me a richer understanding of some issues I’ve wrestled with
around ethical altruism, violence, and justice.

Ethical Altruism

Singer’s argument (that underpins
much ethical altruism) that there isn’t a moral difference between saving the
life of a drowning child, and saving the life of a starving one half way around
the world, has never resonated with me emotionally despite intellectually
trying to support it. This dissonance has been … uncomfortable. Sommers
identifies this kind of issue as a fundamental lack:

Dignity can’t support “us against the world” because it
sees no division between “us” and the “world.” Dignity’s slogan is “We are
the world”—which sounds nice in principle but can be isolating in practice.
Individuals can truly belong to a family, sports team, gang, class, or school
group. But the “human family”? It’s difficult, maybe impossible, to feel
connected to something as massive as all of humanity except in the most
abstract and metaphorical manner.

Violence

Is violence ever acceptable? When? This was particularly topical in light of
anti-fascist violence earlier this year.

Dignity doesn’t have much to recommend for the oppressed. Dignity is passive;
it tells us to respect others and not to violate their rights. Okay, but how
should we respond when our rights are violated? On that question, dignity is
silent, and honor has a lot to say. Honor says, “You should be prepared to
fight and even to die to preserve your self-respect and the respect of others
in your group.”

He forwards an idea (which I haven’t fully processed) that conflict is actually
necessary for a connected society:

It may sound paradoxical, but today we place too much value on our own
lives. Threats to physical safety, no matter how infinitesimal, have come
to trump all other concerns, moral and otherwise. This obsession with risk
is antithetical to honor, which places supreme importance on courage and
being faithful to your group’s principles. […] Excessive aversion
to violence has produced ineffective zero-tolerance policies, the
school-to-prison pipeline, a massive police state, and the largest prison
system in human history.

[C]onflicts—both violent and nonviolent—are important for maintaining
relationships in an increasingly segmented society. Conflicts provide
opportunities for active participation and engagement with other human
beings. They reconnect us with others, allowing individuals and communities
to discover who they are, what they’re made of, what they believe and feel.
Honor-based conflict without insults leads to greater cooperation. As Nils
Christie puts it, “Conflicts might kill, but too little of them might
paralyze.” It’s impossible to completely eliminate violence without also
reducing productive community-building conflict.”

Justice

This book also introduced me to a critique of the US justice system, in particular around the idea that having the state handle justice without any regards for victims is a problem:

Defenders of the status quo often assume that punishing wrongdoers
automatically restores the self-respect of victims by sending a message to
the offender that the victim is a person whose rights cannot be violated. But
this is a rationalist fantasy with no basis in real human psychology.

… and also provides an overview of a proposed solution “restorative justice” that involves the victims:

The results of a recent Canadian survey indicate that 89 percent of violent
crime victims wanted to meet the offenders. Even in what seems like the most
problematic type of crime—sexual assault—victims report positive effects from
meeting with offenders. Victims who participated in restorative conferences
showed a decrease in PTSD symptoms. Survivors reported that the “experience
was empowering rather than traumatizing.” In another recent study, 70 percent
of rape survivors reported that they would welcome the opportunity for
victims to be able to meet with their offenders in conference settings.

We cede the role of punisher to the state in large part to prevent victim
retaliation and vigilantism. But we don’t do this for reasons involving
justice. We do it for practical reasons—to prevent escalating feuds and to
limit collateral damage.

I particularly liked this chapter: providing practical examples of how
reintroducing some ethic on honor could actually make a difference, grounded in
actual examples, while constraining it to mitigate downsides. I was worried
about potential issues of discrimination, but then so is the author:

At this stage, the worries about racial bias are purely speculative.
Restorative justice is a recent movement, and more empirical work needs to be
done to gauge the effects of racial bias on restorative processes. But given
the systematic and structural biases that infect our current disciplinary
practices, it would be difficult for restorative justice to fare any worse.

The author also provides example of dramatic decreases in gun violence from
approaches founded on a constrained honor ethic.

At times I don’t feel the author did a great job of “re-express[ing] your
target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says,
“Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.” when talking about dignity.
But given how familiar I (and presumably you, given how pervasive it is)
are already with the concept I was able to read through it. I am sure that
better critiques of the ideas in this book exist than the author presents, but
that doesn’t detract from the book. It has given me fuel for thought, not a stone
tablet.

Like the The Righteous Mind
this book has given me new ideas to help understand and interpret the world.
Highly recommended.